Guns, Hopes and Dreams

Last week, as I watched the memorial service for those lost in the rampage in Tucson, I couldn’t help but think how commonplace this kind of horror has become.

Christina Greene, a child who came into the world on 9/11/2001, a day of mass murder in America, left it on another murderous day. We’ve heard about the hopes and dreams of her inspirational little life. We know that she was an exceptional child who was destined to make a difference. She came to that parking lot that day hoping to learn about an America that was better than it turned out to be.

Less attention has been paid to the bookends of her 9 short years. The violence that framed Christina’s life has become so expected, so normal, that we only take notice when it’s at its most extreme, as it was for her. Here’s what Christina’s last moments looked like on that day:

From a New York Times report …

Christina was unresponsive when paramedics arrived on the scene.

By normal standards, a gunshot victim who is unresponsive after 15 minutes of CPR has almost no hope of surviving and can be declared dead. Christina had already received 20 or 25 minutes, according to a report radioed in to the University of Arizona Medical Center.

“This was a 9-year-old girl,” said Dr. Randall S. Friese, 46, a trauma surgeon at the hospital. “Even though she had CPR beyond our guidelines, I decided to be aggressive, because she was 9. You decide, and you do it.”

He tried a desperate last-ditch maneuver. Within about two minutes, he had cut open her chest, inserted a tube to fill her heart with blood and massaged the heart with his hand to try to start it beating again.

“I had her heart in my hand,” Dr. Friese said. “We filled it with blood. It still didn’t want to beat. So, it was over. We’re finished.”

And so was Christina’s life.

The shooter, Jared Loughner, and his parents had hopes and dreams too. He was a child once. He had parents who loved him. But at some point in time his life began to unravel. It’s hard to know just how or why, but signs of serious mental illness started to appear.

Jared’s teachers and fellow students began to fear him. His friends distanced themselves. The police were called more than once, but they couldn’t do much because he had never directly threatened anyone. A classmate says she made a point of sitting near the door of their math class so she could escape quickly. She was afraid he might show up with a gun and start shooting.

While the talking heads argue about our political gutter talk and whether it helped set the scene for what happened that day (undoubtedly), there are other, more direct contributors setting our young people up for violence that we’re ignoring.

Did you know …?

• According to a Pew Research study, 99% of teen boys and 94% of teen girls play video games. Halo 3, one of the so-called “first-person shooter games”, is #2 on the list of the 10 most frequently played games.
• Almost 16 million teens have witnessed some form of violent assault, either within or outside of their families.
• Research shows a link between violent television programming and aggressive behavior in teens.
• If there is violence in your family, it multiplies the risk of your teen becoming involved in future violence.
• A gun in the home is more likely to be used to kill a family member or friend than to kill an intruder.
• There are 85 guns in circulation for every 100 Americans of all ages.

Add to all that the fact that the late teens and early 20s are exceedingly vulnerable years. The first signs of severe mental illness often appear in adolescence and early adulthood, doctors say. Schizophrenia, for example, is usually diagnosed in the late teens to mid-20s

Researchers don’t know exactly why that’s true, though many believe a combination of biological and social factors come into play.

It’s a time of transition in the brains, as well as the lives, of young people. Recent research has shown that the brain undergoes major changes in neural connections during the teens and early 20s that could help explain why some severe mental illnesses emerge then.

So it should be no surprise that a culture steeped in violence, where our children’s rapidly changing brains are exposed to a constant drumbeat of aggression against one another, combined with a particularly high-risk period in the life cycle, can result in explosive and devastating behaviors. Which is exactly what happened on that Saturday in Tucson. Violence leads to violence.

The question is, what can we do to protect our teens from absorbing the full force of a violent world? Here’s a place to start:

1. Set an example and model healthy ways to express and handle anger. This starts in the early childhood years with a “use your words” strategy. Don’t condone violence in any form.
2. Teach your child that violence is unacceptable, and he will be less likely to consider it as an option. Set up family rules that provide clear consequences for any kind of violence.
3. Get involved in the community, and with your child’s friends and their parents. Establish expectations for the group that limit exposure to violent television, movies, and video games.
4. Create a safe haven for your family. Prevent access to firearms of any kind. If a gun is kept in the home, make sure it’s locked up and ammunition is stored separately. Make sure the families of your child’s friends do the same.
5. Look for warning signs of violent behavior. An obsessive interest in things like weapons, violent games or websites can indicate a problem. Seek help from a mental health professional if you are concerned.

For more information, click here to read about prevention of teen violence. Then start talking — to your kids, to your friends, and to anyone who will listen. How many more Christina Greenes will it take?